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Holocaust monuments in France and Holland vandalized

June 13, 20186:42 am

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(JTA) — Holocaust monuments in the Netherlands and France were targeted in separate incidents deemed anti-Semitic.

In Paris, vandals removed a commemorative plaque that Education Ministry officials had put up at the Ave Maria public elementary school, Le Parisien reported last week. The plaque remembered Jewish children who were deported from there and murdered during the Holocaust.

There was no other damage to the building’s facade, raising the suspicion that the incident was anti-Semitic.

The Ave Maria school is located in the Marais, the city’s historic Jewish quarter. The district’s mayor, Ariel Weil, who is Jewish, called the incident “shameful.”

In the Netherlands on Sunday, unidentified individuals painted swastikas and other far-right symbols on a monument for Holocaust victims in the Midden-Groningen municipality, about 100 miles from Amsterdam. City workers swiftly cleaned off the black paint as police began investigating the incident, the RTV Noord broadcaster reported.

Meanwhile in Italy, a parked car was torched in front of a barbershop in a northern suburb of Turin. The vandals splashed red paint on the shuttered blinds and attached a piece of printer paper with the words “this shop belongs to a Jew,” Corriere de la Sera reported Tuesday. The owner, Gianni Errichiello, is not Jewish.

Errichiello told the paper that he could think of no one who would want to threaten him. Police are investigating the incident, which occurred on a late night earlier this week. The torched car does not belong to Errichiello, according to La Stampa.